Shareen Campbell and Phil Saunter, owners of Los Gatos and Bistro Les Chats in Wood Street, and the Swindon Business People of the Year, talk about life in the restaurant business...

A FEW months ago we wrote about how some of our customers seem to spend more time looking at or talking on their mobile phones than being with friends or partners, with whom they had come out to eat. We hadn’t thought of the effect of this on our business.

Recently we came across some research done in a New York restaurant, whose owners had analysed CCTV footage of customer behaviour from 10 years ago and compared it with recent data. Their findings were mindboggling.

They found that six times as many customers asked for a different table than the one to which they were shown. While the 2004 customers looked at the menu when seated, their current customers looked at their phones. The result was that it was now an average of 21 minutes until they were ready to order, compared with eight minutes 10 years ago.

Their food took exactly the same length of time to arrive on their table, but nowadays more than half the diners spent anything up to seven minutes taking photos of their food or each other – some asking the waiting staff to take photos of the table.

As a result, 20 per cent of the customers now complained their food was cold! (fewer than five per cent had made any complaint 10 years before.) But the biggest difference came when the meal was finished. In 2004, the majority asked for their bill (check) when they’d finished eating, paid and left in an average of five minutes. The customers of today, however, spent another 20 minutes playing with their phones before requesting the bill, and then took another 15 minutes to pay.

The net effect of all this tweeting, Facebooking, photography and Instagramming was that today’s customers spent almost twice as long at the table as those of 10 years ago.

Admittedly, the details are probably more interesting to the restaurateur than to the general reader, but the change in behaviour and its significance is phenomenal. So next time you want to complain about having to wait for a table in a restaurant – switch off your phone!